I was genuinely shocked. Not that Marcotte blocked me, but that I wasn’t already blocked preemptively according to the distributed wisdom of CFI Director Melody Hensley in her efforts to sanitise the internet and create a rape-free safe space where people from all walks of life can furiously nod in agreement with each other. I had never interacted with Marcotte prior to this, and the reply box being visible and active proved too much of a temptation.

No matter. Like it makes any difference. Her more outlandish outbursts always, one way or another, seem to find themselves some place where I run across them. Like the one above – a precious cocktail of an outraged princess devoid of a single clue about the technology that she exploits to spread her venomous nonsense, and which without fail turns around and bites her by allowing that nonsense to be critiqued by unbefuddled minds. Sure, she can censor and regulate opinion on pieces of turf she may own, but, try as hard as she might, censoring the entire ‘net lies painfully beyond her grasp. Which is the problem she has here with Storify – must be like the social media equivalent of a urinary tract infection. It burns and it just won’t go away.

The short story is that Marcotte wants to have her cake and eat it too. She wants the freedom to spout whatever stream-of-consciousness gibberish she pleases – but she also demands the right to do so with complete freedom from accountability, responsibility and scrutiny. What causes her brain to palpitate in continuous, futile rage is that the internet itself is guaranteed to enshrine the former whilst making the latter a technical impossibility. So suck it, bitch. The rest of us do.

There is, of course, a simple solution to Marcotte’s woes. As I stated above, all she has to do is stop saying stupid things and voila! – the problem vanishes. But as long as she insists on churning out mindless, vehement, substance and fact free gibberish, people will keep on capturing it. Like it or not, Marcotte is a public figure making public statements – and there is absolutely nothing she can do to prevent others from archiving her idiocy for the public record. This is in fact a duty that the few remaining Freethinkers amongst us feel honour bound to – if not to mitigate the stupidity of the present, then to warn future generations of it.

“I love me” – melodyhensley.com

And a public record is what I want to make here – this time of Melody Hensley’s latest tantrum. What makes this particular case of particular interest is that Hensley, an executive director of CFI appointed by Ronald A. Lindsay, chose to have her meltdown on CFI’s home turf.

Hensley’s babbling is all an exercise in pure, unhinged narcissism and nothing more. I made an effort to catalogue the fallacious reasoning, cognitive malfeasance and personal attack, but it’s hardly comprehensive. Doing that kind of analysis always gives me a headache. Not a single point of relevance was addressed that I could find, it was just raw spleen –

No, this is a toddler throwing her toys out of the pram – and then crying she doesn’t have any toys.

This is hardly the first such example of public histrionics and high school girl bitchiness from Hensley. It is an endless cycle and one is hard pressed to find any public statement by Hensley anywhere that actually does promote CFI’s core values. She seems instead hellbent on knocking Rebecca Watson off her perch as Queen Bee of the gender feminist fifth column seeking to undermine our communities from within – and this is borne out by the fact that while there is no shortage of hatred directed at dissenting males, the extra special venom is reserved for the females – the chill girls and sister punishers.

One of the most frequent female targets of Hensley’s malice is Sara Mayhew – with some pretty classy examples here. Her response to Hensley is worth quoting in its entirety as it covers most bases of why Hensley should not have anything publicly to do with any secular organisation anywhere –

Miranda Celeste Hale, who has similarly been singled out and targeted for Skepchick gang hatred for entirely unjustified reasons, also responded at length (comment#147) and it is well worth reading as well. I can feel their weariness at having to refute for the umpteenth time that which amounts to knitting circle gossip and shouldn’t even need refuting a first time. But the key point is made by Mayhew in the bolded red section – it is entirely unimaginable that a male should occupy a similar position of responsibility and public visibility with Hensley’s track record in any organisation and not get his ass fired. Just look at the appalling treatment of Justin Vacula over irrelevant trivia amplified by the baboon echo chamber.

But Hensley was by no means finished with this episode of psychodramatics. Having flounced from Radford’s blog, she immediately waddled over to baboon central to further wallow in self-pity and find relief in a comforting shower of in-group solidarity and sympathy –

Ben Radford is contracted by CFI part-time to write about skepticism. Personally, I wish he would stick to bigfoot and other shit I don’t care about about. I am a full-time employee working my ass off often seven days a week running my local community and planning a national conference of all non-thiest women speakers about women in secularism by myself (which is unheard of) on top of that. How do you think this blog makes me feel? Please don’t fuck CFI. I’ve given my life to CFI. Speak out against Radford if you wish, but dammit he’s small potatoes. I’m working too damn hard to change the culture of this movement to have some dude write a sloppy anti-feminist blog and ruin it all.

But the cherry on the dung heap is the second red highlight. Radford is damaging to CFI – not for some lapse in critical thinking, not for accommodating mumbo-jumbo or religion, not for expressing any partisan political or ideological opinion… but for criticising Melody’s particular brand of divisive “feminism”.

Thanks Melody. I don’t think I could ever have spelt out your position within the atheist and skeptic communities quite so clearly myself.

So, I find myself in the position of having to repeat my question – who out there exactly thinks that this is an acceptable place for CFI and the greater communities to be? What has been proven here, beyond the shadow of any doubt, is that sexism does indeed exist within our communities. However, it is not sexism of the kind that Hensley howls about. The real sexism is far simpler and it amounts to this – if you have a cunt, you can get away with whatever you please with absolute impunity. You can lie; you can slander; you can accuse without evidence; you can paint yourself as a victim and get exceptionalist treatment purely on the basis of gender; you can dictate ideology without challenge – and you can do so while feeding like a tapeworm from financial contributions made by our communities and with the absolute support and endorsement of folks like Ronald A. Lindsay.

As mentioned previously, Ron Lindsay is going to be coming around with his beggars cup again some time soon soliciting membership fees and donations for CFI. That will be a ripe time to ask him the questions that need to be asked. Either get CFI back on track, or abandon it for the train wreck it is.

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28 Responses to “Melody Hensley – Executive Director CFI-DC”

I’m actually embarrassed to have contributed significantly to CFI in the not-so-recent past (CFI Canada). Although the Canadian arm of CFI seems to be attempting, wisely, to stay out of it, they will not get another dime from me until they get out of the gender politics and hate business. It’s a shame too, because CFI was the only organization I’m aware of that was working to stop public funding for Catholic schools in Canada. At this point, the evil far outweighs the good. CFI is rotten to the core.

Indeed. CFI Canada has still invited the PZ crew to speaking engagements, but as far as I know, preaching the gospel of victimization and hatred hasn’t been on the agenda. Still, I will not have a single dollar of mine spent paying PZ Myers and team to continue their campaign of intellectual dishonesty, stalking and personal vendetta.

I agree entirely! I used to be vaguely aware of, and proud of, CFI, but it is appalling on reigning in staff. Hensley should have been kicked to the kerb a long time ago – perhaps gently as she does seem to have a lot of psychological issues – but she should still be removed. She flounces around from place to place trumpeting her position within CFI and embarrassing the organisation with her nonsense. She simply is not the type to cope with criticism. She might have somewhere been a reasonable middle-manager but as soon as you put her into either the public sphere or in a leadership role, she will undermine that role.

CFI. Get rid of her. Enough’s enough.

One of my current projects is an article on her (not that I’ve gotten far). I’m going to try to chronicle her ideology and exhibit it. She’s one of the ‘slippery feminists'; her views will change by the moment and she’ll say “I didn’t ever say that.”…

Keep it up, Franc. Also, come back to the Pit. We miss you. We need to rise up as Australian Pitters (and you need to let me know how to vote now Gillard is a monster and we don’t have any other parties…)

I’ve not been on the ‘pit due to private shit of the kind FfTB rattle beggars cups immediately for and then go shoe shopping. Not me, not serious but lots of long drives and hospital type smells are involved. The ‘pit is an enormous chunk of time out of your day – which I haven’t had. So I’m not off in a huff or shitty or anything. It’s just if I can’t read all of it, it’s less frustrating to simply read none of it. I just haven’t been able to do it.

As for elections, I’m holding out a vague hope that the Pirate Party can get its shit together in time. They are sorely needed. And just incidentally, the PP in Europe is having to combat its own gender feminist vandalism. The poison never stops.

I unfortunately have the same problem with the ‘pit. I never have the time to read all the new posts, and it’s almost impossible to jump in half way through. I’ll make a post, then go back 4 hours later and there are 50 new posts! Crazy!

Take care, franc, to you and your loved ones. I hope things turn out for the better, whatever the case may be. No shame in taking breaks from the incessant tsunami of drama, if need be. I need them regularly myself, mental health-wise. Better that than burn out, IMHO. The miasma, or typhon or whatever you call it will all be here awaiting at the end of the day. :-)

Excellent post, franc. I especially enjoyed the rundown of fallacies/etc after each of several quotes.

Not that there needs to be more, but two other aspects to highlight.

First, her several tweets (around the same time as the posts you quoted above) about heavy medication use & drug-seeking behavior to alleviate stress & insomnia. Both the content of those tweets and her posting TMI, in a public venue, can’t help but reflect poorly not only on her but also on CFI for keeping her as executive director of CFI-DC.

Second, note her illuminating comment between the two phrases you highlighted in red: “I’m working too damn hard to change the culture of this movement to have some dude…”. Messiah complex, much?

Really, if it were a real job, HR would pushing a “leave of absence”. She doesn’t look like she’s got many threads left to hang on to. But I’m fresh out of any sympathy. As someone else (who I forget) said, maybe her boyfriend should step in and prohibit her from the ‘net.

And yes, the “change the culture” is another clanger. Missed that entirely after overdosing on the rest. It’s pretty much a written confession that this bullshit has nothing to do with either atheism OR skepticism and is little more than a push for an ideological coup.

I have had time to read only half, but will make a quick comment.
As usual, the best cataloging of baboonery from people in positions of power, and fun commentary.
It was fun reading through melody’s answers, this time through the spot-the-fallacy lens.. man, this is real skepticism, and its fun too.

Fun fun fun ’til her daddy takes the keyboard away….Sorry, i had to do it. °◡° I’ve seen your comments around a lot recently & i must admit i agree with just about 100% of what i’ve read, don’t know if you have a blog but if you do can you link me?

@theoffensiveatheist:
Thanks. No blog.. I am just a nobody MRA regurgitating basic anti-feminist talking points. The knowledge is out there.. such as the 101-type vid documentaries at http://www.manwomanmyth.com/ or the 201-type vids by GirlWritesWhat. I am only trying to popularize them.. coz the baboons sure have controlled the window of viewpoints within which the debate may be held. They dont even have the balls to address GreyLining who demolishes their narrative staying within the bounds of mainstream narrative.

Thanx for the Man/Woman Myth link & i have watched quite a few of GWW vid’s (although i wish she’d make just a few shorter ones, maybe i’ll suggest it?) & enjoy them. What i’ve seen happen to this Atheist community that i generally admire so much in the last year & a half is so depressing. The whole A+ thing was such a blatant play for control of what the Feminist on the fringe of the movement saw as a growing & popular community. They don’t even understand it, they saw an opportunity & to hell with the consequences. They’ve done the same in the past with other groups & usually the result is they’re either totally destroyed or changed beyond recognition from what they were before that a lot of the original members leave. They think they create but the reality is that they destroy. They saw the general Atheist respect for Human rights as a way to promote rights for their favourite half of Humanity & hoped no one would notice. What has heartened me in all this, is that so many people of both sexes saw straight through them & called them out for what they were trying to do. The thing i remember that (oddly) got me REALLY thinking was a tweet from Ophelia Benson (I think) where she was complaining(surprise surprise) about seeing a homeless guy masturbating & saying he was “Masturbating AT her”. A silly thing i know but it said so much. It was things like that that made me start looking into the MRM, i mean if they hate it so much, i guessed there must be something in it right?☮

The whole A+ thing was such a blatant play for control of what the Feminist on the fringe of the movement saw as a growing & popular community.

Mykeru’s law –

“As any progressive movement grows and achieves success, the probability of it being co-opted by women who want to make it all about their vagina approaches 1″

They think they create but the reality is that they destroy.

In a pure Nietzschean sense (as he wrote in The Antichrist), like xtians, they are functional nihilists. They are life negating, as opposed to life affirming. They create nothing which adds to the experience of life; instead they concoct a fraudulent morality that seeks to constrains others’ experience of life through shame, fear and guilt. As I keep repeating, this fascism dressed up as feminism is just the window dressing to what is a much deeper disease.

The thing i remember that (oddly) got me REALLY thinking was a tweet from Ophelia Benson (I think) where she was complaining(surprise surprise) about seeing a homeless guy masturbating & saying he was “Masturbating AT her”

That was BlogHog / Jen McCreight. Really, that she even thinks that most males get aroused by her mere presence is the best highlight of the depths of their narcissistic self-absorption. She does to my penis what salt does to a slug.

This is the reason the FC(n) dare not acknowledge Greylining as a legitimate source: because it would be too scathing. This is a brilliant rebuttal to Melody’s meltdown in Ben Radford’s CFI thread and it’s well sourced to boot. They can’t ever claim you don’t do your homework.

However, the best thing about it is Melody does most of the slapping. You just have to read her words back to her.

::Cough:: Is there a living in writing anymore anywhere? Unless you can crank out sludge like 50 Shades or Da Vinci Code, it’s pretty grim. I pick up what I can. Pays for booze, smokes and the occasional temporary companion… It is not a “career choice” anymore. Tutoring / professional letter writing etc. is about the only way you can pay bills.

It seems pretty profitable to, say, start a religious blog network, call it “AtheistThoughtBlogs” then write posts about how all male atheists are rapists. Rapetheists. If you ever want to give up your self-respect and intellectual honesty, give that a shot.

Maybe they (CFI) could have a quiet word & release a statement saying something like “leave of absence due to health issues”? At least that way they have a legitimate reason for dumping her as she’s admitted herself that the jobs too much for her & is affecting her health. I’m trying to be charitable here, she’s not been a success & her continued involvement with CFI will not only encourage others like her but will continue to harm the organisation. Sadly, i can’t see her bowing out gracefully.

I remain befuddled as to why CFI leadership does not care more about the organization’s reputation and allows one who acts like a rogue agent to cast an appalling pallor on their mission. If one is a valued employee of a compassionate organization and uses the organization’s communication platforms to unleash personal drama there are several ways to address inappropriate behavior; progressive disciplinary action, revoking access to communication tools, leave of absence until problems are resolved, etc. Most employers would act swiftly to terminate immediately. Unless of course, CFI leadership identifies with this individual’s point of view and is willing to risk a decline in membership. Because as noted by others, if it continues, members will take a hard look at the wise use of their dollars when it’s time for membership renewal.

“Why?” is indeed the question. Ultimately, it is not how it looks to those that are participants within the various fragments of the communities involved that matters – it is how it looks to those outside: the religionists and the social conservatives. This especially impacts atheism – just as it made enormous leaps to stand on its own feet, encourage folks out of the closet and finally get some kind of respect instead of derision, along come clowns like Hensley, Watson and Myers who have a sledgehammer party undoing all the good work. They are one of the best gifts the loopy, god bothering right has ever had. They are to them what Coulter, Limbaugh and Beck are to what passes for the “left”.

You may find some interest in the related posts linked at the end. There are several things to note. First, Hensley was actively involved in the ejection of Paul Kurtz, and the directorship may have been a reward from Lindsay. Second, is Lindsay a collaborator or a hostage? Is he fully complicit with Hensley’s pretty obvious agenda or, having let the vipers in his den, is he now too terrified to move?

I genuinely have no idea. I’m at the arse end of the planet. This is largely a north American problem I would have no interest in – were it not that both myself and quite a number of people I know have been, and still are being, attacked for essentially doing little more than stand up for genuine Freethought principles.

The real sexism is far simpler and it amounts to this – if you have a cunt, you can get away with whatever you please with absolute impunity. You can lie; you can slander; you can accuse without evidence; you can paint yourself as a victim and get exceptionalist treatment purely on the basis of gender

Franc, I am happy to see that one of your oft-quoted intellectuals.. Robert Anton Wilson.. saw through the BS in his lifetime.Blinded by bigotry? Taking a closer look at AndrophobiaAs the sociologist Lawrence Diggs has said, racism remains totally visible whether from whites against blacks or from blacks against whites, but sexism remains totally invisible if it comes from women against men. We would think it pathetic but perfectly “normal” and natural if Danny Quayle or Bill Clinton had to spend their lives in wheelchairs like Ron Kovic, but it only becomes monstrous and unthinkable if you imagine it happening to a pure, noble, female creature — like Tonya Harding, say.

We only regard our allegedly sub-human males as expendable, like laboratory animals. Women we see as truly and fully human, and hence not mere “cannon fodder.”
…
The New Jews
Under the cha-cha penthouse where Robin Morgan and a gaggle of other Radical Feminists hold a cocktail party to complain about their exquisite emotional sufferings, way down in the dark, in the alley, among the discarded condoms and the rubbish, you will find our new Jews. A group of males, some of them white, sleeping in the freezing rain. A rat bites one and he cries out, briefly in his sleep. But the exquisite ladies do not hear that, up in the penthouse where the intelligentsia meet to manipulate the media and mold the lines of thought and image that control social perception.

The rain continues to fall on the homeless men. Their bodies and minds destroyed in Vietnam, these dehumanized creatures remain beyond pity and beyond compassion, beyond the perimeter of the human commonwealth, because of the shape of their genitals. We must not consider Radical Feminism a crazy Hate Group, of course. We must accept it as chic; and as ultra-modern; and as politically correct. Only the people who hate on the basis of nose-shape or skin-color deserve the label of bigots, of course. Of course.